2009 — 27 August: Thursday
Last time I used tonight's picture of Christa (here) and her Old Windsor strawberry crop I see I was reporting success with a crop of socks in Matalan. Time for another trip there, I suspect.
Also time for some sleep ahead of a vaguely-planned walk. I've been enjoying an evening with the fictional workers in a fictional West Wing of a fictional White House. G'night.
Scarlatti rocks!
But there are times when Rob Cowan's BBC Radio 3 breakfast show is just a little too light on detail. This (at 09:02) is one of those times. Sonata in D, K 443(?) in an unusual variant, it seems. Who knew? I bet Zeno did.
As implied, breakfast is under way. The sun is shining. A packed lunch has been decided upon but not yet, erm, packed. The cup that cheers awaits my lips. As does the walk that exercises. No idea where, yet, but it had better not be too vigorous (see above re socks).
As a youngster, in geometry lessons, I didn't initially see the flaw in assuming the truth of that which you were required to prove. I soon caught on, but that's another story. I was reminded by this worrying blog entry, though one of the things that caught my eye was actually a delicious Feynman quotation:
There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
Now, here's an elaborate theory indeed! And from Liverpool. Takes me right back to the weird creature in AC Clarke's "The City and the Stars".
TTFN.
Back...
... to a couple of phone messages. Tomorrow's car service is now even earlier at 09:40 (yawn) and if I call back "Audio-T" by such and such a time (I did, with two minutes to spare) I could specify an alternative wood finish for the loudspeakers and still stand a fighting chance of getting them some time tomorrow. I'd specified (light) oak since that was a near match to the current Castle Avons. But (since they're now going to be out of sight behind my head as the rear surrounds) it belatedly occurred to me that the front pair might just as easily be some other colour. I've opted for cherry, rather than black.
And quite serendipitously my chum Henry (supplier of three Oppo players and the Edge scaler) has just mailed out a freebie Blu-ray HD audio setup and test disc to all his customers, so I've borrowed Mike's SPL meter (I last needed this in 1998) to stand a reasonable chance of setting up the new speakers and amplifier combination in some rough semblance of a properly-balanced and calibrated surround sound system. I doubt I'll have the phase coherence of his Quad Electrostatics, but then that's why I'm adding a decent centre speaker to the mix.
Time, I think, for a quick splosh after today's little trot around Alresford. And to browse this Interweb malarkey for a new pair of boots. I've actually managed to wear my present ones out in the last 21 months or so. Amazing.
That's better. I feel almost human again. Good grief, it's 16:59 and there was just a tiny suggestion of a rumble of thunder far away. 61.4 million people in the UK , heh? That sounds like an awful lot of people... And 66 known deaths from the porcine virus, so far.
Pretty pixels
Courtesy of Mike's latest digital SLR. My (attempted) contribution to the first photo (apart from spotting the thing) was to try to hold it still against the breeze:
By contrast, this little chap (whom Mike spotted when he [the amphibian, not Mike] was hopping along) never moved so much as a muscle throughout the pixellation process:
I expect a brief visit in 15 minutes or so from our fungi expert; the plan is for him to depart laden with a couple of surplus items of kit. We shall see.
Later
The system was demonstrated, and I covered the rudiments of TV adjustment, courtesy of Joe Kane. I wonder how he'll get on. Now I'm hungry. Today's hasty supper was a culinary first (and last): mini spare ribs. They don't exactly fill a chap up after a chap's been out walking. Still, it's better for the waistline if one goes to bed faintly hungry, I'm sure. Now I have tomorrow's car service to look forward to / worry about. And (possibly) tomorrow's meeting with my new loudspeakers. They're busily excavating the roads in the immediate vicinity of "Audio-T" which will make the experience even more fun. I can't see myself walking far carrying the damn' things, that's for sure.